Helen Longino

In 2016 Helen Longino was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018.

In 2014, Longino's book Studying Human Behavior (2013) was awarded the Best Book in Feminist Philosophy Prize for 2014 by the Women's Caucus of the Philosophy of Science Association.

She served as president of the Philosophy of Science Association (2013–2014), and is the First Vice President of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (2016–2019).

Most recently, in Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality (2013), Longino examines five scientific approaches to human aggression and sexuality in terms of their epistemological frameworks, the types of knowledge that they produce, and their pragmatic goals. She argues that different approaches begin from and build upon different causes, each of them producing partial knowledge about the subject. As such, they cannot be reduced to a single perspective. From her perspective in social epistemology, Longino argues that scientific research will be more useful as a guide to public policy makers if the plurality of different approaches to knowledge is acknowledged. Increasing awareness of the range of perspectives to be examined can benefit policy by more thoroughly informing decisions, and also encourage caution about too quickly adopting policy positions based on a limited perspective.

Longino's book The Fate of Knowledge (2002) explores and attempts to reconcile the accounts of knowledge of philosophers and sociologists of science.

In 2002, Longino's book The Fate of Knowledge (2001) received the Robert K. Merton Professional Award for best book from the Section for Science, Knowledge, and Technology of the American Sociological Association.

In her first book, Science as Social Knowledge (1990), Longino argued for the relevance of social values, or values which are part of the human context of science, to the justification of scientific knowledge as objective. In her contextual empiricism, she argues that observations and data of the sort taken by scientists are not by themselves evidence for or against any particular hypotheses. Rather, the relevance of any particular data for any given hypothesis is decided by human beliefs and assumptions about what kinds of data can support what kinds of hypotheses. Moreover, even when the relevance of evidence is decided, there remains a logical gap between evidence and full justification of interesting scientific theories (the traditional philosophical problem of underdetermination of theories). This gap, too, must be bridged by beliefs and assumptions about legitimate reasoning in order for evidence to help us decide which hypotheses to accept as true.

Longino taught at the University of California, San Diego (1973–1975), Mills College (1975–1990), Rice University (1990–1995), and the University of Minnesota (1995–2005) before joining the philosophy department of Stanford University. She was active in the women's liberation movement and in establishing women's studies in several institutions. She became the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy in 2008 and served as chair of the philosophy department from 2008 to 2011.

Longino received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1966 and her M.A. in philosophy from the University of Sussex, England, in 1967. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in 1973, under the supervision of Peter Achinstein. Her dissertation dealt with Inference and Scientific Discovery.

Helen Elizabeth Longino (born July 13, 1944) is an American philosopher of science who has argued for the significance of values and social interactions to scientific inquiry. She has written about the role of women in science and is a central figure in feminist epistemology and social epistemology. She is the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.